Round Table Breakfast Challenge

Dilemmas on the path towards becoming an agile organisation.

For a Dutch version of this post, see below!

On 15 June 2018, the Centre for Innovation – Leiden University hosted a round table breakfast session around a theme that may be familiar to many organisations, namely the dilemmas on the path towards becoming an agile organisation. How can we facilitate large organisations or “dinosaurs” to adapt to this continuously changing world, while abiding by existing rules and procedures?

Together with change agents from the public and private sectors, as well as academia, we explored how we can deal with the diverse dilemmas that accompany changing to a more agile way of working. During the breakfast session, we shared experiences to learn from and with each other. We hope the participants left feeling inspired, with new insights and strategies for engagement.

After short presentations by Dr. Marcel van Oosterhout, Morshed Mannan and Kim van Eijck the following statements served as conversation starters:

Is agility in business the same thing as agility in government?

Do we need new organisations in the platform economy that represent the interests of platform workers and other stakeholders? If so, what would such an organisation look like? If not, why not?

Agility can only be measured based on perceptions and we do not need to define any metrics for that.

Leaders should create space for agile behaviour.

During the breakfast session, some themes reoccurred in the conversations. Themes such as accountability, the role of higher management, vision, common goals, attention, and the difference between government and business regarding agility were brought up repeatedly. Interestingly, participants perceived a similar mind-set both in a governmental context and in business. Yet, there were some key differences, such as businesses needing agility to survive, while the government has a focus on (social) service delivery. A frequently mentioned thought was that, becoming agile in a decision-making context requires the support of higher management. Another factor that is important to becoming more agile, is vision in the team and the organisation. Vision changes the conversation from a focus on efficiency to a focus on common goals and the ways our choices contribute to achieving them. Additionally, attention is a relevant factor. If you do not have the capacity to do the work you need to do mindfully, it is difficult to see when existing protocols do not suffice for the given situation and a new way of working is needed. You need some ‘slack’ in your day, some free time, to see when you need to change course.

This session was one of the results of the collaboration between Leiden University’s Centre for Innovation, PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC), Uitvoeringsorganisatie Bedrijfsvoering Rijk (UBR) and CA Technologies. This autumn we will host the event ‘Agile for Ambidexterity’ where research and practice will join forces to prepare the organisations of today for the future. Keep an eye on the website of Agile for Excellence!